I’ve never been one to turn down cake. Admittedly, I have a bad sweet tooth and it’s been a struggle for decades. And a nice slice of moist cake and a sweet frosting on top is hard for me to say no to. Honestly, I don’t think there is a flavor of cake that I would ever turn away, except maybe Carrot Cake! I’ll pass… but if you give me some cake shaped as one of my favorite cartoon characters and iced with some questionable dyes – I’m definitely in! I really love birthday parties, and growing up figuring out a theme for the birthday party and what your cake would look like was a very big deal back in the 70s and 80s!
A few weeks ago I was helping my mother put away some of her Christmas decorations in her storage building, and peaking out of an open box I caught a glimpse of R2-D2! I walked over and pulled out a thick magazine called “Wilton Yearbook 1981: Cake Decorating”. This 184 page magazine had a price tag from SEARS on it for $3, but was scratched out for $1.50. Inside was a collection of cake molds, decorations, toppers, pans, as well as decorating and serving tools – plus cake baking and decorating tips! The back cover was a great looking Star Wars themed ad featuring their R2-D2 and Darth Vader cake pans and a collection of three Star Wars birthday candles – Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and R2-D2. I grabbed the magazine and told my Mom I wanted to borrow and look through it. Flipping through the pages brought back memories of not just mine and my brother’s past birthday parties, but also several parties of my cousins and friends as well!
Finding the magazine inspired me to search through my family photo archives looking at birthday parties and our cakes from the past. I’ve edited a few to share here. Some kids today (and now adults) may look at these cakes and laugh! I grew up in a world where I had no idea what fondant was to make “realistic” looking baked creations. Some of our old cakes looked somewhat crude. A custom cake for my family back then was going to the Cardinal grocery store’s bakery and looking in the display counter and flipping through a book of cake design options! Funny enough, I thoroughly enjoyed this process decades later when planning my own son’s childhood birthday parties!
And of course, sometimes that cake didn’t come from a store at all. My Mom or one of my Grandmothers made it - often with many of these very cake pans that I was looking at inside this magazine. My Grandma had a large clown cake pan and I think every grandchild in the family had their first or second birthday with that same big clown cake! Besides, the pans didn’t go bad, and at one or two years old we didn’t exactly have a choice in what the cake would look like!
But by the time we reached three and on, it was time to start making important decisions – would it be a Cookie Monster cake? Big Bird? Oscar the Grouch? I can remember my fifth birthday being one of the first birthday parties that I had invited guests from the neighborhood – and not just my cousins. I was REALLY into the ‘Super Friends’ on the Saturday morning cartoons, and that was my theme. I had ‘Super Friends’ birthday invitations, plastic ‘Super Friends’ goody bags filled with candies like Starbursts to give out, and the coolest of all was the cake – my favorite super hero, Batman! I have some photos from that party below, as well as the front of one of the invitations, the cake, and of me opening presents – where I go my first Star Wars X-Wing Fighter! What a glorious day!
Over the years as certain cartoons or trends would come and go the cake themes would change. While I was in to Star Wars more than my little brother, he was the first to get a Darth Vader cake. The image below of the brown Vader cake was his, the black one was mine later on. You can also see of photo of a homemade cake on the kitchen table with a Darth Vader candle stuck in the middle. That is the exact same candle that is being advertised in the Wilton’s cake magazine in the back!
So here is to the old way of doing birthday cakes! Sometimes they were from a store and sometimes by Mom or someone else in the family. They were exciting and really helped set the mood for your big day. In this day of seeing Instagram bakers that create cakes looking just as realistic as the REAL thing, I kind of miss seeing an entire cake decorated with little star puffs squirted out of a bag.
Below are some photos I’ve also attached of a few select scans from the Wilton’s magazine of some licensed cake pans. Enjoy! And if you have any comments or questions, please email me at [email protected]
